Quote:
Originally Posted by Pooka
Some scope buying advice for older folks.....
Being older than almost anyone else on Earth is not always as much fun as it sounds. One thing that suffers is your vision and your ability to see colors.
I have lost the ability to see some wavelengths of red, which is no big deal except that many scopes today have that point of light thing in them and it is always red. I just have to take someones word for it that there is a red dot inside the scope because it is invisible to me.
I have heard of scopes with green dots, but I have never tried one.
The point of this is: If you are of advanced age you may want to consider not going with a scope that depends on anything red lighting up inside of it since it is just a matter of time before you will wonder what is wrong with the scope. The answer will be the scope is just fine, but your eyeballs are getting worn out.
I guess I am lucky to have learned to shoot without a scope and I have never found one that was of any advantage to me. I also can't get the hang of that shooting a pistol while holding it with both hands thing, so I guess it all depends on what you learned when you were first starting out.
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At this point I have no color problems at all, and didn't even know it was something that went away with age. The scope I bought has only red and I can see it fine. If the problem were to ever arise for me I can simply turn off the illiumination and use the normal crosshairs.
The more modern scopes I looked at yesterday could be switched to red or green. There was even at least one with blue.
There was a time that I was EXTREMELY proficient with iron sights. In the Army I qualified expert with the M14 and was able to take out the pop up human silhouette targets at 350 meters. I am still reasonably proficient with iron sights for my age. When I was waging the coyote war about 20 years ago, I had a chance opportunity with only my iron sight Marlin 30-30 at hand and bagged the coyote at about 100 yards. Part luck, seeing it in the first place, but I like to think that there was marksmanship involved with the shot.
I don't expect that I will get very many close shots at coyotes even calling them in, thus a scope will definitely give me better odds for success.
I love to plink with the ,22 companion to the 30-30, a model 39A. I think that keeps my iron sight shooting relatively proficient. IMHO shooting proficiency is one of those things that can go away badly without practice. I never fired a rifle with a scope until after I was out of the Army.
What is your effective range on something the size of a coyote and with what rifle?